Bird watching has become a major industry in North America (Canada, USA and Mexico).

I is worth US $25 billion a year and employs over 60,000 people. It rivals the chemical steel industries in economic clout.

Bird watching is a non-consumptive use of renewable resources,dependant uon the protection of wildlands and wilderness habitat.

It thrives and grows on the protection of biodiversity.

Yet the economy and employment provided by bird watching is being threatened by traditional economic activity, such as forestry (levelling forests, strip-mining, and chemical industries, that destroy bird habitat, pollute bird air and water, and reduce biodiversity. Unfortunately, there is no Bird Watching Industry Association that has matched lobbying clout of the Mining or Pulp and Paper Associations. How often do you hear an orchestrated complaint from the forest industry that environmentalists are threatening logging jobs and threatening economic growth? What you don't hear are the bird watching jobs and others like fisheries jobs are threatened by the clear-cut logging and strip-mining. It is no longer a matter of forestry, mining, oil extraction versus the environment. It is no longer a matter of economic engines being stymied by nature-lovers. It is a matter of economics versus economics. Jobs versus jobs. There is big money and huge job-creation in environmentally-friendly jobs such as bird watching. An economic balance must be struck between the two economies. Part of this balance includes providing a strong lobby on behalf of bird watching and the environment industries that are being threatened by unsustainable development. Part of this balance means modifying tax and fiscal measures to level the playing field between the competing economies. It also means shifting to a sustainable economic accounting approach by both governments and industry.

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS ON BIRD WATCHERS

"The quiet, teeming world of bird watchers and feeders, includes about one- fifth of the American population, more than 50 million people who outnumber hunters and anglers combined, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." The NYT's reported that, "bird watchers now spend more than US $25 billion a year on feed, binoculars, travel and high-tech innovations like winterized birdbaths and television "nest cams" to track their plumed favourites from home or watch penguins caper live on the Internet. Various birding and wildlife groups are forming an 83-member policy council through the conservancy dedicated to building political awareness and translating it into budget and legal muscle to protect the myriad of non-game birds fluttering under the gaze of this special-interest public". Hundreds of high-style bird food stores have opened, offering everything from the Yankee Flipper (a battery-powered feeder whose perch begins wildly spinning at the touch of an intrusive squirrel to cast him off) to Under Cover Coffee (purist beans harvested without the usual denuding of bird habitats).

Visit Visit the Audubon Society website at http://www.audubon.org/campaign/ . the birdwatchers' Council website at http://www.abcbirds.org . Also see the American Birding Association website at http://www.americanbirding.org . Source, "As Their Numbers Soar, Birders Seek Political Influence to Match", by Francis X., Clines, New York Times, February 4, 2001